Abstract

Deformable mirror device (DMD) spatial light modulators are a unique family of silicon integrated circuits that combine addressing circuitry and light modulating elements in a single monolithically fabricated part. The DMD light modulators have moderately high resolution with pixel spacing of approximately 25 µm in 128 by 128 arrays. The on-chip electronic addressing circuitry is capable of full frame addressing of the 128 by 128 array at rates as high as 8000 frames per second. The details of the fabrication, electronic addressing, and the electro-mechanical aspects of these devices have been reported in several papers. [1-3] Applications of the DMD light modulators to optical correlation, frequency excisors, optical switching, folded spectrum analysis, and optical neural networks have also been reported.[4-7] This paper describes the optical modulation characteristics of DMD elements and compares the response characteristics of three different types of deformable mirror structures.

© 1990 Optical Society of America